A Bridge Across the Milky Way
by Mangaka-chan
Summary: A year has passed since Subaru gathered the courage to speak to Aoi. Now, on the eve of the Tanabata Festival, surrounded by friends new and old, an encounter with Aoi's school friend Kyou puts Subaru on the path towards reuniting with a boy from her past. Will their reunion end happily, or will they meet only to part ways again like the stars in the legend of Tanabata?
1. Chapter 1

**A Bridge Across the Milky Way**

Author's Foreword: When I started watching _Houkago no Pleiades_ I wasn't expecting it to affect me the way it did in the end. Like Subaru, I'm an astronomy geek, and my first time behind a drive shaft (i.e. driving a car) was also a bit of a disaster. The anime's bittersweet ending left me wanting to know more, but with a two years old movie announcement and no evidence that anything new is actually being produced, I was left to my own devices. So, I ended up doing what many fans in similar situations have done.

I wrote my own sequel.

A story like this will probably become quite common in the Pleiades fandom, small though it is. Nonetheless, I hope you will enjoy this tale that my Muse has spun. I tried to keep things as well researched and factually based as I can without getting too morbidly realistic, especially when it pertained to Minato's medical condition (trust me, reading primary medical literature about the recovery of long-term coma patients is not an uplifting experience). Each chapter will have an Author's Notes (A/N) section at the end, explaining some of the more esoteric points raised in the story.

I've also drawn complementary illustrations for each chapter. Here is the link to the illustration for chapter 1 (please delete the spaces and replace the period): fav (period) me/d90ofh4

Disclaimer: _Houkago no Pleiades_ / _Wish Upon the Pleiades_ belongs to GAINAX Co., Ltd. and Fuji Heavy Industries, Ltd.

* * *

Chapter 1

The noisy buzz of cicadas, the smell of freshly cut watermelon, and the gentle breeze from a bamboo hand-fan; all of these together formed the quintessential picture of summer on a quiet August afternoon.

Enjoying the summer warmth on a shaded patio were a pair of young girls: Subaru, who sported pink hair with two rebelliously curly tuffs, and her friend Aoi, who had short blue hair and gray rimmed glasses.

Subaru sighed contently as she swallowed the last of the watermelon slice Aoi's mom had prepared for them. Next to her, Aoi was studying the neighbor's tabby cat that had wandered into her backyard, and was now lying lazily by their feet. Then Aoi looked up toward Subaru.

"You're going to see the Perseids meteor shower?" Aoi asked as her fan stirred the air in front of her face, "That was the same meteor shower from the flier you gave me last year, right?"

Subaru shook her head. "Actually, they're two completely different meteor showers!"

Subaru turned to face her blue-haired friend and Aoi could practically see the stars dancing in her friend's excited eyes as she explained, "The one from last year was the September Perseids.* It's a minor meteor shower. The summer Perseids is a lot more dramatic, but since it occurs while we're on summer vacation we can't use the observatory at school to see the meteor shower. Instead, we're planning to go see it on the hill at the edge of town."

"We? Oh, that's right, you mentioned three people joined the Astronomers' Association at your school over the last year," Aoi tipped the oval bamboo fan to her chin thoughtfully.

"I was actually wondering if you'd like to come too, Aoi-chan. That's why I came by today." Subaru said, smiling wistfully down at her hands on her lap. "I know we don't go to the same school any more, but you're an important friend to me, and I would really like for us to spend some time together while we can over the summer. So it would be great if you could join us for this year's meteor shower."

Aoi blushed and swiftly shifted her gaze back to the cat resting on the stone courtyard. "Ah! O-of course I'll go!" Aoi stammered. "After all," the blue haired girl looked back at Subaru with a warm smile, "I couldn't make it for last year's meteor shower, so I definitely won't miss out this year!"

"Great!" Subaru beamed. She looked down at the pile of watermelon rind and reached for the plate, "Here, let me throw these away!"

As Subaru began walking into the house, Aoi's hand waving the bamboo fan paused, and she looked back at Subaru.

"Say, Subaru…would it be alright if I invited Kyou to come along as well?"

Subaru blinked at her friend. "Kyou? Who's that?"

"My friend from school, um…you know, the red-haired girl that you see me riding the bus with everyday?" Aoi offered weakly.

"Ah!" Subaru exclaimed. "That's right! I'm sorry, Aoi-chan! I completely forgot her name!"

Aoi sighed. Subaru was a sweet person, but despite being in their second year of junior high and having a knack for astronomy-related facts, she was still a little slow when it came to things like remembering people's names. _Some things never change I guess_ , Aoi thought.

Shrugging her shoulders, she reassured Subaru, "Don't worry about it. If it's alright with you, I'll call her later and ask her if she's available tomorrow night."

"Sure! The more the merrier!" Subaru smiled cheerfully.

* * *

The next evening, Subaru stood waiting at the bus station at the foot of the hill where they would view the meteor shower. Against the orange and pink glow of the setting sun, a bus pulled up to the station and three girls the same age as Subaru disembarked.

"Ah! There she is!" a blonde girl with twin pigtails pointed in Subaru's direction and bounded towards her.

Subaru waved back, shouting, "Good evening, Hikaru-chan, Itsuki-chan, and Nanako-chan!"

"Good evening, Subaru-chan!" Itsuki replied, her dark, cropped hair swaying as she walked.

"Bonsoir," Nanako, a lavender-haired girl who had a knack for languages, greeted her in French.

Once the girls joined Subaru under the glow of a street lamp, Nanako held up two heavy plastic bags in her hands, and said in a calm, mature voice, "I brought some snacks in case anyone gets hungry."

Subaru peered inside the bags and gasped when she saw two large plastic lunch boxes packed with homemade rice balls and mini croquettes, as well as cookies, soft drinks and other goodies. "Wow! They look so good! Nanako-chan, did you make all of these?"

Nanako smiled. "The croquettes, yes. My mom taught me how to make them when I visited her in France last year. My little brother is visiting right now, and he's the one who made the rice balls."

"In that case, let's get going, then! The croquettes are going to get soggy if we don't eat them soon!" Hikaru chimed in as she hopped onto the stairs leading up to the viewing platform.

"Hikaru-chan, we're here to look at stars, not eat croquettes," Itsuki teased.

While her friends joked, Subaru looked around and frowned. "Let's wait a little bit longer. Aoi-chan isn't here yet."

Hikaru tilted her head. "Aoi-chan? She's your friend from elementary school, right?"

Subaru nodded, looking down the road for any sign of another bus coming their way. "Yeah. She said she would come today, and she invited a friend of hers to come too."

As Subaru stood on her tiptoes to get a better look, the twin headlights of a bus could be seen approaching them in the last light of dusk.

When the bus came to a stop at the station, Aoi, wearing a light blue and white sports jacket, hopped off and jogged to meet up with Subaru. "Sorry, I was late! I missed the first bus so I had to wait for the next one."

"No worries," Itsuki said. "My name is Itsuki, and this is Nanako-chan and Hikaru-chan," she gestured to the other girls, each of whom waved or nodded their greeting at Aoi. "The three of us are members of the Astronomers' Association along with Subaru-chan. It's a pleasure to meet you."

"Uh, hi, nice to meet you guys too," Aoi scratched her head bashfully.

"Kyou-chan didn't come with you, Aoi-chan?" Subaru asked. Overhead, the sun had set and faint streaks of light could already be seen flying through the dark sky.

Aoi shook her head. "She said she's coming, but she's going to be running a bit late. Let me call her and see where she is right now."

Just as Aoi took out her phone, a second bus pulled up to the station and a red-haired girl with a beauty mark below her right eye walked off. Seeing Aoi, she waved, shouting, "Aoi-chan! Hey, sorry I'm late!"

"It's fine," Subaru smiled. "After all, the sun just set, so we still have plenty of time to see the meteor shower."

"That's good. Oh! My name is Kyou, by the way. I'm in the same class as Aoi-chan here."

After the girls had introduced themselves, Hikaru tapped her foot impatiently and gestured up to the platform, "Come on, let's go! Or else the croquettes really are going to get soggy!"

Aoi looked at Hikaru askance as they began their ascent up towards the viewing platform.

Following the trail of neatly paved stone stairs, the girls climbed the first few tiers of stairs in silence, their light summer jackets illuminated in the otherwise pitch black night by the fluorescent light from the street lamps.

After a few minutes, Aoi turned to look back at Kyou and asked quietly, "Were you volunteering at the hospital again today, Kyou?"

Kyou nodded as the many pinpricks of light from their hometown gradually appeared below them as they rounded the side of the hill. "Yup! I'm helping with organizing the blood drive scheduled for next week. Today things took a little longer than I thought, so I ran a bit late."

"But I thought you have to at least be in high school in order to volunteer at the hospital?" Hikaru cut in. "How are you able to work there if you're still in junior high like the rest of us?"

Kyou grinned mischievously. " _That_ is a secret!" she said, winking at the other girls, all of whom looked back at her dubiously. "But if any of you don't have plans for next Wednesday and are looking for something to do, you're more than welcome to help with the blood drive! Even though we're not old enough to donate blood yet, we can still chip in and help out at the event."

Nanako did a quick calculation in her head and said, "But next Wednesday is the day before the Tanabata Festival. Wouldn't the blood drive be competing for attention with the festival that way?"

Kyou shook her head. "Actually, the hospital chose to do the blood drive right before Tanabata on purpose. We want to inspire people to give blood. That's why the motto of the blood drive is: 'Show Your Love! Donate Blood!'"

Hikaru frowned, her arms crossed, "Somehow that just sounds like you're taking advantage of the festival for self-promotion."

Hearing this, Kyou puffed up her cheeks indignantly and retorted, "It's for a good cause! There's a very real shortage of blood and plasma in Japan, so this event is important for the patients!"

Seeing things were starting to get a little heated, Aoi stepped in between Hikaru and Kyou and held out her arms. "Okay! Okay! Come on, you guys, we came here to look at stars! Let's not start arguing before we've even started."

"Aoi-chan's right. Let's enjoy ourselves tonight," Itsuki added diplomatically.

Overhead, a bright streak of light shot past, and the six girls turned their heads up at the heavens.

As they watched, many more shooting stars followed, some lasting no more than the blink of an eye, others drawing a bright streak before vanishing towards the horizon.

"Wow…" Kyou whispered, her argument with Hikaru completely forgotten as she stood, mesmerized, by the meteor shower overhead.

The girls hurried up the final tier of stairs to arrive at the viewing platform. While Subaru set up her telescope the others laid out the picnic blankets that Itsuki and Hikaru had brought. Before long, they had settled down, sipping or nibbling on the snacks Nanako made while Subaru pointed out the various celestial objects in the night sky.

"Over there," she fixed her index finger towards the brightest star in one pocket of the sky, " is the star Altair in the constellation Aquila."

She moved her finger up, towards the right. "That's Vega, the brightest star in the constellation Lyra."

Shifting her finger slightly to the left, Subaru said, "And between them is the star Deneb, in the constellation Cygnus. Together they form the Summer Triangle."

"Altair and Vega are Hikoboshi and Orihime from the legend of Tanabata, right?" Itsuki asked. "And Deneb is the magpie that forms the bridge between them on the Evening of Seventh."

"That's right, Itsuki-chan! Deneb is a blue-white supergiant star thousands of light years away, and is ninteen times the mass of our sun!" Subaru answered enthusiastically. "Here, let me see if I can focus on it."

The pink haired girl adjusted the angle of her telescope, and after a minute said to her friends, "Go ahead, have a look!"

The girls hopped to their feet, and Kyou—who was first in line—turned to Subaru after she had her turn looking through the telescope and asked, "Say, can you take pictures with your telescope?"

"Umm, you could use a T-ring and a T-adaptor to attach a camera to the telescope," Subaru answered, "But I don't have the equipment."

"I see…" Kyou sighed, and sat down on the ground next to Aoi. "That's too bad. It would be great if I could show Nii-san pictures of the stars like we're seeing them now," she said with disappointment as her eyes remained fixed on the Summer Triangle.*

"Your older brother likes astronomy?" Subaru asked, her curiosity piqued.

Kyou nodded, a small smile on her lips. "Yup. He absolutely loves stars. They're his favorite things in the world."

"Then you should bring him next time we go see a meteor shower!" Subaru exclaimed excitedly. "Today is the peak day for the Perseids, but the Orionids meteor shower in October are great too!"

But instead of sharing in Subaru's enthusiasm, Kyou's expression fell, and she said wistfully, "That's not possible."

"Eh? But—"

Before Subaru could voice her thought, Hikaru piped up and asked, "Subaru, if this is called the Perseids meteor shower, does that mean we'll be able to see the constellation Perseus tonight too?"

"Ah, about that…" Subaru glanced back at Kyou, but she was now talking with Aoi.

Not wanting to interrupt, Subaru turned back to Hikaru. But in the back of her mind she wondered what Kyou had meant by those words.

* * *

A/N

*September Perseids: I didn't realize this at first, but the meteor shower Subaru went to see at the beginning and end of the anime isn't the famous Perseids, but was in fact the smaller September Perseids (aka September Epsilon Perseids). The famous Perseids meteor shower occurs between mid-July to late-August, which would be during summer vacation for students in Japan. By the time the girls are back in school in September it would already be over. But the September Perseids, as its name implies, occurs in the month of September, and is dimmer and less dramatic than its summer counterpart.

*Nii-san: a Japanese term for older brother.

Thanks to Tomoyo Ichijouji for beta-ing and proofreading!


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Two days after the meteor shower, the weather showed no signs that autumn would soon be on its way. In the midday heat mirages shimmered above the hot tarmac while scant patches of cloud drifted lazily across the sky.

Dressed in light summer clothing, Aoi and Subaru make their way toward the bus stop closest to their homes as a chorus of cicadas serenaded them from the trees above.

"So what kind of accessories are you thinking about getting, Subaru?" Aoi asked, her hands tucked in the pockets of her shorts.

Subaru touched her lips thoughtfully, strands of her pink hair swayed as she walked. "Hmm, my mom got me a new yukata this year. It's pink, and there are stars printed on the sleeves and hem. There's even a small purse made with matching fabric! I was thinking about getting a bracelet or new hair clips to match the yukata, but I don't have a good idea of what I should get."

Turning to Aoi, Subaru smiled shyly, "Aoi-chan, you have a much better sense of style than I do. So I was hoping you could help me pick something out today."

Aoi looked away sheepishly. "I-I'm not some sort of fashion expert or anything, you know!"

"But I think you do have really good taste. Even though you don't like to let on the fact that you like clothes, I think you have a very keen eye for putting outfits together," Subaru replied sincerely.

Hearing her friend's compliment, Aoi couldn't help but smile back. "Alright then, we'll see what we find at the shopping arcade, and I'll try to give you my best suggestions."

"I look forward to it!" Subaru beamed.

As they approach the bus stop, Aoi's footsteps came to a halt when she saw Kyou sitting by herself on one of the benches, a thick stack of papers cradled in her arms.

Kyou noticed them too, and greeted the two girls from her seat. "Oh! Hi there, Aoi-chan, Subaru-chan. Where are you two going today?"

"To the shopping arcade," Subaru answered. "What about you, Kyou-chan?"

"I'm going there too." She looks down at the bundle of papers in her arms, and Subaru could see they were posters for the hospital blood drive. "I put some up around the park this morning. I'm planning to post the rest around the shopping arcade."

"That's a lot of posters, though. Are you sure you can do it on your own?" Aoi looked doubtfully at the half-inch thick stack of posters.

Hearing this, Subaru got an idea, and she said to Kyou, "I can help you put up the posters. Then it won't take as long!"

Aoi's brows furrowed at her friend's impulsive decision. "But didn't you say you wanted to buy accessories to wear to the Tanabata Festival?"

Subaru nodded, and folded her hands behind her back. "We can still look around while we're there. Maybe we can also ask some of the shop owners if they would be willing to let us put up one of the posters in their store to help promote the blood drive?"

"That's a great idea, Subaru-chan!" Kyou smiled broadly and turned to Aoi. "Aoi-chan, will you help too?"

Seeing both Kyou and Subaru looking expectantly at her, Aoi sighed heavily and muttered, "That's what I get for being friends with you two."

As much as she was exasperated by their behavior sometimes, a part of Aoi was glad that Subaru and Kyou were getting along so well. Shrugging her exasperation aside, Aoi smiled and, taking a deep breath, said, "Alright then, I'm in!"

* * *

Once they arrived at the shopping arcade, it quickly dawned on the girls that their task was going to be a lot more difficult than they thought it would be. Everywhere they looked, from utility poles to windows and walls, there were decorations and advertisements for the Tanabata Festival, leaving very little room for them to put up their own posters.

"At least we got a few shop owners to put up a poster in their shops," Aoi sighed, fanning herself with the stack of posters she was holding. "We've been walking around for nearly an hour already, and yet look at all these posters we still have to put up."

Kyou, however, was not ready to give up so easily. She wiped her sweaty brow and raised her head up toward the street. "We've only gone through the first part of the arcade. There are still three more sections left. Let's keep going!"

"Okay," Subaru nodded, tucking a stray lock of damp hair back behind her ear as they walked up to the intersection.

"Subaru! Hey!"

At the sound of her name, Subaru snapped around and saw Hikaru, Itsuki, and Nanako running to catch up to her. "Oh! Hi everyone, what are you all doing here?"

"Shopping for the Tanabata Festival, of course!" Hikaru flashed her a grin. "We tried calling you on your cell phone a couple times to see if you wanted to come along, but you never answered."

"Eh?!" Subaru shuffled the posters in her hands and pulled out her phone from the bottom of her purse. Sure enough, there were three missed calls and half a dozen missed text messages.

Looking sheepishly at her friends, Subaru offered them a weak smile, "Sorry! My phone was in my bag, and I was so distracted I never heard it ring."

"Don't worry about it, Subaru-chan," Itsuki smiled. Her eyes turned to the stacks of posters in the three girls' arms. "I take it the three of you are putting up posters for the blood drive?"

"Yeah, we ran into Kyou at the bus station," said Aoi. "But there are so many ads for the Tanabata Festival that it's hard to find space to put the posters up."

"If there's more people then it should be easier, right?" Nanako said, and reached to pick up a portion of the posters in Subaru's hands. "It might be hard for three people to find space for the posters, but with six pairs of eyes it will be a lot easier."

Itsuki and Hikaru looked at one another and smiled. "You have a good point there. After all, 'many hands make light work'!" Hikaru said as she took half of Kyou's stack of remaining posters.

"You guys…" Kyou was speechless for a moment as the girls divided the remaining posters evenly amongst themselves. The corner of her lips pulled into a big smile, and she said sincerely, "Thank you all so much!"

* * *

"There! It's done!"

The six girls looked on with pride as they stuck the final piece of tape onto their last poster in the window of a convenience store. By now it was late afternoon and after a lot of searching, taping, and at times cajoling shop owners, the girls had managed to find homes for all of the posters Kyou had printed.

The red-haired girl turned around and said to the others with a grateful smile, "As thanks, I'll buy drinks for everyone! Pick what ever you like; it's on me!"

"Yay!" Hikaru cheered, while the others nodded their thanks and the group dispersed through the store to pick out the beverage of their choice.

Subaru walked to the refrigerated drinks isle and reached for a carton of cold strawberry milk. To her surprise, another hand also reached for the same carton, and Subaru found Kyou standing next to her.

"Oh, sorry!" Kyou retracted her hand, but Subaru shook her head, and handed Kyou one of the pink cartons before taking another one for herself.

"You also like strawberry milk, Kyou-chan?" Subaru asked as they made their way to the register for checkout.

Kyou gave Subaru an ironic smile and said, "Actually, when I was little, I thought pink-colored milk was really weird. But when I was five years old my brother gave me some strawberry milk, and I've liked it ever since."

Subaru blinked in confusion as the store clerk scanned their items. "You changed your mind?"

"You could say it's because of nostalgia," Kyou answered as they exited the store and gathered around an empty bench.

Once she, Subaru, Aoi, and Itsuki have sat down on the short concrete bench, Kyou took a sip of the pink milk and looked back at the blood drive posters they all worked so hard to put up. "When we were kids he used to tell me stories about stars and constellations while we drank strawberry milk together. So the taste of strawberry milk reminds me of the pleasant memories I have with him."

The crease in Subaru's brows deepened at those words. She touched her chest and a strange feeling bubbled up inside of her.

 _Stories about stars and constellations, and sharing strawberry milk… Why does that sound so familiar?_

While Subaru was lost in thought, Itsuki tilted her head forward and said to Kyou, "I'm really impressed by you, Kyou-chan. You work so hard to promote the hospital's blood drive. How long have you been working at the hospital? You seem like someone who's very passionate about medicine."

"This is my second summer working there. And you're right; my goal is to be a doctor someday. But right now I'm still a long way off. I still have high school and medical school to think about, after all," Kyou replied pragmatically.

"Speaking of which," Aoi frowned disapprovingly, "how _did_ you get the volunteer position at the hospital anyway? How did they not catch on that you're still in junior high?"*

"Ah, about that…" Kyou noisily finished off the last of her strawberry milk. When she spoke again, there was an unmistakable mischievous twinkle in her brown eyes. "When I signed up for the volunteer position they just asked to see my school ID. My ID only says which year and class I'm in, not what my date of birth is. My school is a combined junior and senior high school, and since I'm a bit taller than most girls my age they didn't bother to look too closely at my ID and simply assumed I was a high school student."

Five mouths dropped open at Kyou's candid response. Mortified, Aoi stammered, "B-but what if they find you're not actually in high school? You could get kicked out of the volunteer program, and you won't be able to work there again!"

To everyone's surprise Kyou simply shrugged. She set the empty carton down on the bench and said, "I know that. This will be the last summer I'll be able to volunteer at this hospital anyway. I just want to do as much as I can while I'm still here."

"But why? " Hikaru wondered. "Short of them finding out about your age, what would prevent you from going back next year?"

Kyou stretched her arms forward and sighed. She lifted her eyes to gaze at the colorful Tanabata posters posted around the shopping arcade, and the same sober tone Subaru had briefly heard the night of the meteor shower replaced the normal good cheer in Kyou's voice.

"My brother fell into a coma many years ago after contracting meningitis while he was in the hospital. We thought he would never wake up, but last year he miraculously came out of his coma," she said, her voice brightening briefly. "He was moved out of the ICU, and has been improving steadily ever since. Now he's well enough that his doctors and our parents have decided he can be transferred to a medical facility where they specialize in rehabilitating patients with his type of condition."

Kyou's gaze drifted back to the people passing in front of her, a sad smile on her lips. "During the school year, with classes, homework, and club activities, I don't have many opportunities to visit my bother in the hospital. I wanted to spend more time with him during summer vacation while doing what I can to assist in his recovery. So when I entered junior high last year I thought I'd give volunteering a shot, and to my surprise, I was accepted!

"But the rehab facility he's going to is half an hour away by train. Once school starts I'll have even fewer opportunities to see him. I know as I am right now, there's very little I can do for him, but I want to put in as many hours as I can at the hospital to keep him company, and do what I can to help other patients who are also going through difficult times."

When Kyou looked back at the girls she saw that all of them had gotten misty eyed, and she blushed involuntarily at the sight of their empathy. "Y-you guys, don't cry!"

"Kyou-chan!" In unison, the five girls gave Kyou a collective bear hug, drawing curious glances by passing pedestrians.

When they finally pulled away and Kyou could breathe again, Subaru was the first to speak up, and she said with conviction, "I'll help you with the blood drive, Kyou-chan!"

Kyou blinked in confusion, and said hesitantly, "Why this all of a sudden…"

"You said it yourself that the hospital still need volunteers to help out with the blood drive, right?" Hikaru answered.

"But…"

Itsuki winked at Kyou, and said, "Just like you, Kyou-chan, each of us by ourselves can't do much to help patients in need, but I think together we can help out in ways that no single person can." Looking at her friends, Itsuki beamed, "Isn't that right, everyone?"

The five girls nodded in unison, and Kyou laughed, completely taken aback by the tremendous response she'd gotten from this group of girls whom she barely knew.

"You guys really are serious, aren't you?" she said quietly, a smile still lingering on her face.

Five pairs of firm, resolute eyes met her own, and Kyou nodded in acknowledgment of their support. "Very well, then! I'll meet you guys in the hospital lobby the morning of the blood drive."

Pushing herself up on her feet, Kyou held her hand forward. The other girls followed her example as they stood with their hands clasped together. "Let's all do our best!" Kyou began.

Then with six voices in unison, they shouted, "One, two, three! Let's go!"

* * *

A/N

*Age to volunteer at a hospital: this is a bit of hand wrangling on my part, since I don't know what the rules are in Japan. But based on my research, most hospitals in the US require volunteers to at least be in high school. Some children's hospitals I looked at accept volunteers as young as 13 years old, but I don't know how common these types of specialized hospitals are in Japan, so I went with the assumption that the hospital Minato is at is a prefectural level general hospital.

You can find the illustration for this chapter here (remove the space and replace the period with a dot): fav (period) me/d91milu

Thanks to Tomoyo Ichijouji for beta-ing!


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

"Mom, Dad?"

Subaru's parents looked up at the sound of their daughter's voice. The three of them were seated around the kitchen table eating dinner while the sound of the evening newscast filled the background.

"I'll be helping out at the hospital blood drive next week. Dad, I was wondering if you could give me a ride there that morning?" Subaru said over the TV news anchor.

Her parents shared a quizzing glance with one another before Subaru's father nodded with a smile. "No problem! But just out of curiosity, what made you want to help out at the blood drive all of a sudden, Subaru?"

Subaru looked up from the piece of salmon she had just placed in her rice bowl and said, "Aoi-chan has a friend, Kyou-chan, who volunteers at the hospital. She said they're short on help with the blood drive, so Aoi-chan, Hikaru-chan, Itsuki-chan, Nanako-chan and myself offered to help her."

"It's great that you're helping your friends, Subaru, and for such a noble cause too. Mom and Dad are very proud of you," Subaru's mother said, smiling at her daughter.

"Ah, our little girl is growing up!" Subaru's dad exhaled deeply. Beaming with pride, he said, "You've started to change into a wonderful, considerate young lady, honey."

Subaru blinked as a feeling of déjà vu washed over her for the second time that day.

 _When did I hear Dad say that before?_ She wondered to herself as she finished her meal, but her mind drew a blank.

When she stood up to help her parents clean up, Subaru's mother asked, "By the way, how's the book report coming along, Subaru?"

"Pretty good," answered Subaru, depositing a stack of plates in the warm, soapy water of the kitchen sink. "I'm done reading the book on stars and mythology that I had borrowed from the library, and have started to write down my thoughts about it. I'm going to go and work on it now."

As Subaru turned to go upstairs, the weatherman on TV could be heard saying, "A low pressure system is expected to move into the Kantō area later this week. The system brings a high likelihood of rain and thunder showers, and will affect the region over the Tanabata holiday."

"That's too bad," Subaru's mother lamented. "I guess Orihime and Hikoboshi won't be able to meet this year."

 _Orihime and Hikoboshi…_

Subaru's mind lingered on the names of the star-crossed lovers as she entered her room and looked out the window at the twinkling Summer Triangle in the clear night sky.

The story was familiar to her, and indeed, to all children in Japan. Orihime was a beautiful celestial maiden who fell in love with the human cow herder, Hikoboshi. But the heavens were angered by their relationship and split them apart on either sides of the Milky Way. The magpie took pity on them, and on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month, the magpie and its friends would form a bridge across the Milky Way to allow the lovers to met. This day became known as Tanabata.*

 _But if it rains on Tanabata then the rain would keep the magpies from flying, and Orihime and Hikoboshi would have to wait another year for a chance to meet_ , Subaru reflected as she sat down at her desk and opened her school notebook.

She picked up her pencil, and flipped open the book titled _Stars and Their Legends_ to the chapter on Vega and Altair, and began to write.

 _It must be hard, not knowing when you'll next see the person you love. If they had never met, then they would never know the pain of separation. But at the same time, they would also have never known the joy of having met one another._

 _If it were you, what would you choose? Would you wait patiently, year after year for the chance to see that special person again, or would you pretend your encounter was an illusion and continue on with life as though it never happened?_

The dance of Subaru's pencil across the page paused. She propped her chin in her hands and contemplated the question she had posed in her notebook.

 _If I were separated from someone important to me, what would I do? Would I wait for the other person, no matter how long it took, or…_

Turning her head absently to look around her room, Subaru caught sight of her pink compass, sitting at the edge of her desk; the light from her lamp revealing a deep crack etched across its surface.

"Eh?" Subaru picked up the compass and examined the damaged surface. "That's strange," she pouted. "When did the glass on the compass crack?"

Try as she might, she couldn't recall dropping it or bashing it against anything. It was as if the crack had always been there; but Subaru knew this couldn't have been the case, or else she wouldn't have bought it in the first place. Then when and where did it happen?

The feeling of déjà vu from earlier crept back into her mind, and the nagging feeling of memories just out of reach made Subaru sighed loudly in frustration.

Pushing back from her desk, Subaru decided that when it came to memories there was no use forcing the issue, and that a hot bath was in order. After all, she had been walking around all day, and even with the air conditioner on at home her skin still felt sticky from all her physical exertion earlier in the day.

She placed the compass next to the telescope bag where it belonged, and made her way down the hall to the bathroom. While she let the faucet run to fill the tub, Subaru gathered up her towel and summer PJs, and proceeded to remove the star shaped hair clip from her hair.

Once the hair clip was in her hands, Subaru paused when she looked down at the familiar object. Unbidden, she remembered holding another star in her hand once.

It was made of sheets of bright origami paper. She was five years old at the time, and her mother was hospitalized for a month due to a sudden illness. During one of her visits to the hospital, Subaru remembered she had gotten lost, and had stumbled tearfully into a mysterious room filled with stars and met a boy with red hair.

Her memories of his face was hazy, and she had no recollection of his name, but now as she retraced those distant memories she remembered that he could magically turn the whole room into space, and that they would float off to see the universe together. The red supergiant Betelgeuse, the impossibly bright glow of the Pleiades star clusters, and so many others impossibly distant stars were revealed to her on her visits to his room.

As a show of appreciation, Subaru had made an origami star with her mom, and had given it to the boy as a gift. Though it was diminutive in so many ways compared to the radiance of real stars, the boy was happy to have received a gift from her, and had in turn gifted her a tiny star of her own. It had shimmered and twinkled in her hands, and the feeling of delight she'd felt as it hovered above her palms came washing back over her like a wave upon the shore.

SPLASH!

Subaru jerked back and gasped when she saw the water from the tub had begun to spill over the side. "Oh no, oh no!"

Subaru scrambled over to the tub, and nearly slipped on the slick tiles. She turned off the faucet as quickly as she could, and once the water stopped draining into the tub and the excess water had run into the floor drain, Subaru slumped down next to the tub and took a deep breath to calm her still pounding heart.

"Everything all right in there, Subaru?" Subaru's mother called from downstairs after hearing the stumbling noises coming from the bathroom.

"I-I'm fine, Mom!" Subaru called back and gingerly picked herself up to take off her now heavily soaked T-shirt.

Feeling something pointy prickling in her left palm, Subaru opened her palm and saw she was still holding onto her hair clip. Gently placing the ornament next to the sink, Subaru frowned as her thoughts returned to the recollection she had earlier.

 _Strange, why did I start remembering this all of a sudden?_ she mused as she stepped into the warm water and wrapped her arms around her knees.

Subaru could not recall what she had done with the star the boy gave her, much like how she could not recall how the crack came to be on her compass, and the idea that she once held a real star in her hands and was able to travel to far away galaxies seemed like nothing more than a child's flight of fancy.

 _After all_ , _no one has traveled beyond our solar system yet, much less beyond the speed of light._ _Maybe it was all just a dream…_ she thought to herself as she stared with half-lidded eyes at her reflection in the water.

Yet, as much as the logical side of her mind told her it was pure fantasy, Subaru was also quite sure it wasn't; at least, not all of it.

She clearly remembered making the paper star, with her mother's more experienced hands guiding her own to fold and turning sheets of paper into a pretty five pointed star.

She recalled the acute sense of disappointment when she had presented the star to the boy and had realized that it could not match the beauty of the stars he had shown her. But most of all, she remembered the great fun she and the boy had, sharing their love for astronomy and the stars with each other.

Maybe not all of her memories of the boy and his mysterious hospital room were real, but Subaru was sure the boy was, and that they had truly met.

Subaru leaned back and looked back at the ceiling through the clouds of steam. Having made peace with the uncertainties of her memories, she now silently wondered whatever became of that boy. She never had a chance to say goodbye to him, and she assumed he must've been discharged from the hospital one day, and didn't have the opportunity to tell her.

 _Does he live in this town? Or does he live somewhere else now?_ Subaru wondered.

As these thoughts flitted through Subaru's mind, outside the clouds began to gather, obscuring the light of the stars in the night sky.

* * *

Just as the weatherman had predicted, the day of the blood drive was gray and overcast. The low hanging clouds seemed to threaten rain at any minute, and Subaru looked anxiously out of their family's car as her father drove her to the hospital.

"I hope the weather won't affect the turn out for the blood drive," Subaru said to herself.

"It hasn't started raining yet, and you girls did such a great job of advertising, I'm sure the people who've decided to donate will come for sure," Subaru's dad said from the driver's seat to her right.

"I hope so…" Subaru answered as the top of the hospital building could be seen in the distance.

The car drove past the entrance to the shopping arcade Subaru and her friends had visited days earlier. As Subaru's father prepared to turn right onto the old concrete Kasasagi Bridge that would take them to the hospital, a construction worker in a yellow hard hat stopped him and motioned for him to turn around.*

Rolling down the window, Subaru's father stuck his head out and asked, "What's going on? Why is the bridge closed?"

"Maintenance work, sir!" the worker answered. "The bridge is due for repairs so it will be closed for the next three days. In the meantime, please use the highway detour if you need to get to the other side."

Subaru's dad groaned. "That's gonna be an extra 25 kilometers!"

Knowing there was no point in arguing about the matter, he started to turn the car around and said to his daughter, "Honey, do you want to text your friends and let them know you'll be a bit late?"

Subaru nodded and 20 minutes later, they arrived outside the hospital where Kyou was waiting for her.

"Did you get delayed by the bridge closure too, Subaru-chan?" Kyou asked after the two girls had greeted one another.

"Yeah, it took a while longer than it otherwise would've. But we still have time, right?" Subaru asked anxiously.

"Don't worry, we still have plenty of time. The head nurse will first give us a short orientation, and then we can get started," Kyou explained as she led Subaru into a conference room that had been converted into a temporary venipuncture station.

There were a half dozen chairs with armrests positioned next to small side tables. On the tables were neatly arranged pieces of medical paraphernalia that Subaru had no clear idea what they were used for. While the décor of the room was minimal, she could see a hand-made banner on the back wall, thanking the donors for their time and contribution, as well as signs directing the donors where to go before and after they've donated blood.

The rest of Subaru's friends had gathered around a larger table at one end of the room, which was stacked with packets of orange juice, bottled water, and different kinds of cookies. Hikaru, being the most energetic of the group, leapt to her feet when she saw Subaru and Kyou and waved at them.

"Hi Subaru! Did you end up having to take a detour too?"

"Yeah, but it couldn't be helped," Subaru shrugged as she put her bag down in the pile the others had already made at the foot of the table.

Seeing that Kyou was back, a nurse came up to the girls and said, "Kyou-chan, are these the friends you talked about?"

Kyou nodded, and the nurse smiled appreciatively at the six girls. "Hello, everyone. I want to first thank you for coming today. Your participation in this event is of great help to us! I'll be going over your tasks here today, as well as some general safety procedures here at the hospital."

After the short orientation was over, the girls were given volunteer badges and began their task of providing direction and distributing snacks to the blood donors. At first the there was only a trickle of people coming into the room to give blood, but gradually, as the morning wore on, the number of people coming in steadily increased, and the girls ended up needing to help organize a queue out in the hallway for those waiting their turn to donate.

By the time it was noon, half of the snacks they had started out with had been passed out. The nurse who had given them their orientation in the morning walked back up to them and smiled broadly. "Good job, everyone! We'll close for an hour for lunch break. Feel free to take one of the snacks if you'd like, and there's also a cafeteria upstairs where you can buy lunch. Kyou-chan, do you think you can show them where the cafeteria is?"

"Sure thing! Follow me!" Kyou motioned for the girls to come with her as they made a beeline for the fourth floor cafeteria.

After they'd bought and eaten their sandwiches with gusto, Subaru stood up from the table and said, "I'm going to go use the restroom. I'll meet you downstairs."

The other girls nodded, and Subaru went to the restroom she had noticed on their way up from the lobby. After she was finished with her business, Subaru paused when she looked down the unfamiliar hallway, and realized she didn't know which way to go to get back to the elevator.

"Um, was it from over here?" Subaru looked tentatively to her left, then to her right. But all of the hallways looked exactly the same, giving her no landmark to orient herself by.

With no one around, Subaru chose one direction at random and set off, not noticing the sign that read "Pediatric Step-Down Unit" on the wall around the corner.

With only the squeak of her shoes against the linoleum floor and the muffled voices on the public announcement system in her ears, Subaru meandered down the hall, looking around tentatively for any signs of a nurse or doctor who might be able to give her directions to the elevator.

As she came near the end of the hallway, the peculiar sights from behind a partially open door made Subaru pause in her tracks. From where she stood, Subaru could see a darkened door with dots of light moving about. When she perked up her ears, Subaru thought she could also hear music coming from the room as well.

This scene somehow felt incredibly familiar to Subaru, and before she knew it, she found herself with her hand gingerly pulling the door ajar and slipping inside.

The sight that greeted her made Subaru exclaim a silent gasp of awe. Splashed across the floor, the ceiling, and the walls were hundreds of stars, slowly rotating around the room. The peaceful tune of "Au clair de la lune" played softly in the background, and a strong wave of déjà vu struck her.

"I've seen this before…" Subaru whispered, as the memories of a boy in a hospital room surfaced in her mind.

Turning to look at the source of the stars and the music, Subaru's eyes opened wide when she saw the sleeping figure behind the rotating planetarium.

It was a boy—a young man really—with long red hair, resting with his upper body propped up on the hospital bed. The pale white glow of the monitors that flanked the headboard illuminated his face, highlighting the hollowness in his cheeks.

Yet, despite his narrow frame, there was a handsome fairness to his features that reminded Subaru of the sleeping princess from fairy tales her mother used to tell her. Though his eyes were closed, a growing feeling of recollection in Subaru's heart told her she at one time knew what colors his eyes were.

As the tears began to swell into her eyes, they catch on a familiar object next to the boy's pillow that she had not seen for more than seven years.

It was the paper star she had made as a child, now slightly tattered and worn from age, and preserved behind the protective glass of a small wooden frame.

At the sight of the paper star Subaru brought her hands to her mouth and tears spilled over the banks of her eyes and flowed down her cheek. There was no mistake. This was the same boy she had met as a child, who had taken her to see the stars, and had happily accepted her modest gift, a gift that he had kept with him even after all these years.

Trying not to cry aloud, least she woke the sleeping boy, Subaru pulled her hands away and smiled tearfully at her long lost friend.

"So it really wasn't a dream…" she said with a quiver in her voice as the song came to an end and the light from the planetarium grew dark and extinguished. In the now darkened hospital room, Subaru sniffled and wiped her tears on her sleeve.

But before she could do little else, the door to the room opened again, and Subaru stared at the figure she saw outlined in the light of the hallway.

"Kyou-chan! What are you doing here?"

"That's what I should be asking you," Kyou' replied incredulously from the doorway. "What are you doing in my brother's room?"

"Your brother…" Subaru looked back at the sleeping boy, stunned.

While Subaru processed this new information, Kyou closed the door behind her and drew apart the curtains to allow sunlight into the room. Without the darkness to obscure her view, Subaru could now clearly see the heart rate monitor and other devices that the boy was hooked up to, as well as the thin, frail state of the boy's body.

The sight made Subaru's heart ache, and her throat felt tight as she spoke quietly to Kyou, "What is your brother's name, Kyou-chan?"

Kyou picked up the planetarium from the tray table and gingerly placed it on a side cabinet.

With her back to Subaru, she answered, "Minato."

* * *

A/N

*Tanabata Festival: Also known as Qixi in China, the story behind Tanabata is well known in East Asia. In fact, the Chinese word for the festival means "Evening of Seventh", as it takes place on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month. Japan switched over to using the solar Gregorian calendar in the 19th century, and as such, in many parts of the country the Tanabata celebration now takes place on July 7th. However, in some places Tanabata festivals are still based on the lunar calendar, which is roughly a month behind the Gregorian calendar. In 2015, the festival would fall on August 20th.

*Kasasagi Bridge: Kasasagi is Japanese for "magpie".

You can find the illustration for this chapter here (remove the spaces and replace the period with a dot): fav (period) me/d91yefm

Thanks to Tomoyo Ichijouji for beta-ing!


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

"Minato…"

Subaru whispered the name to herself. A part of her was glad to finally be able to put a name to the figure in her memories, but a bigger question tugged at Subaru. She asked, "You mentioned he was in a coma. So is he better now?"

"He is. As far as the doctors can discern, his memory and cognition are intact. But he does have trouble with fine motor skills and verbal communication, and can only say a few words or short phrases at the moment. His sleep cycle is also still off, and he would often fall asleep during the day and stay awake for hours at night. But I don't think he really minds," Kyou smiled wistfully. "It lets him watch the stars at night, and in case he does sleep through the night, the nurse would sometimes turn on the planetarium so he could see the stars during the day."

She looked down at the black spherical projector in front of her and smiled fondly and said, "My brother's health had always been poor. Almost all of my memories of him were in a hospital setting of some sort. Our parents are also very busy, so I didn't get to see him that often even before his coma. But I remember whenever I did come to visit, I would always see him either reading about the stars or playing with the planetarium my parents gave him. For a long time this was his most precious possession."

"Was?" Subaru wondered aloud.

Kyou quietly walked over to her brother's sleeping form and picked up the framed paper star by his pillow. "I remember coming to see him one day and he showed this paper star to me. He said a friend of his gave this to him earlier in the day, and he was so happy to have received a present from a friend for the first time. That same friend had also left him two cartons of strawberry milk, and he had shared one with me. He told me the next time I visit he'll introduce me to his friend, and I remember being very curious about this mysterious person who had befriended my brother.

"But not long after that he became severely ill and fell into a coma. The nurses in the ICU knew how much the paper star meant to him, so they kept it at his bedside for all these years. It's a little worse for wear now, so when he was moved out of the ICU they framed it and gave it to him as a gift," Kyou said softly as she carefully placed the star back by her brother's side and smiled at his sleeping face.

"No can could explain what brought Nii-san out of his coma, but what we do know is that he still has a long way to go to recovery. The rehab facility he'll be going to has specialists who will work with him to improve his speech and help him walk again. It'll be hard not seeing him as often as I would like, but our parents say we both have a stubborn streak: once we set our minds on something, we don't give up easily. I know Nii-san will do his best to get better, and I will do everything I can to be there for him."

"When…when will he be going to the rehab facility?" Subaru whispered, not quite sure what to think as her mind tried to process everything she'd just learned.

"The morning on the day after tomorrow," Kyou answered. "We've arranged an ambulance to take him there."

Subaru stared down at the floor, and felt her heart sank. "So soon…"

Her lips quivered as the realization that she would discover and loose the friend from her childhood all over again, and she covered her mouth with her hand as a small sob forced its way out of her throat.

Kyou looked at Subaru in puzzlement. Unable to hold back her feelings anymore, Subaru's eyes briefly locked with the red-haired girls', and she began to say, "Kyou-chan, I…I—!"

The door to the hospital room opened and a nurse started in surprise at the sight of the two girls in the hospital room. "Oh! Kyou-chan! You brought a friend with you to visit your brother today?"

"Hi, Hinami-san. Eh, you could say that," Kyou smiled sheepishly as the nurse stepped inside the room. "My friend and I are helping out with the blood drive today, and I thought I'd come up to check on Nii-san during lunch break. Are you here to check on Nii-san?"

"That's right," Nurse Hinami replied, keeping her voice low so as to not disturb her patient. "Has he been asleep the whole time you've been here?"

Kyou nodded. "For at least a good 10 minutes now. Right, Subaru-chan?"

Startled by the question, Subaru nodded mutely. She watched as the nurse went about checking the numbers on the monitors beside Minato's bed, her eyes trained on Minato's reposed figure.

Beside her, Kyou glanced at her phone and gasped, exclaiming "Ah! Lunch break's almost over. Come on, Subaru-chan, we should get going." Kyou took Subaru by the hand and led her back out into the hallway. "I'll see you later, Hinami-san!"

Hinami watched the girls take their leave and turned back to her task. As she looked up from the heart monitor, the boy in the hospital bed stirred and his blue eyes fluttered open.

"Good afternoon, Minato-kun," Hinami stepped next to her patient, "I just came in to check on your vitals. How do you feel right now? Any feeling of pain or discomfort?"

Minato gave her a small shake of the head and a wan smile. Hinami dutifully wrote his response down, but her pen paused when she saw he had lifted his hand towards her.

"Who…" he said, his labored voice a thin whisper. "…Was here?"

"Kyou-chan and a friend just came by. Sorry we woke you. Do you think it will be okay for me to check your blood pressure?"

Minato closed his eyes and gave the nurse his consent with a short nod. Leaning back into the bed, he partially opened his eyes and looked at the hazy white ceiling.

 _A friend…_ Minato reflected. Somehow the voice he thought he heard seemed familiar, like a voice he remembered from a dream.

The truth was, for Minato the last seven years of his life had felt like one long, disjointed dream. He remembered sitting in the lush interior of a greenhouse, traveling to the depths of the ocean, flying across the boiling surface of the sun, and racing through the emptiness of space. Throughout it all, there was always a pink-haired girl, who managed to find him no matter which exotic locale he found himself in.

He recognized the voice he'd just heard in his room as the voice of the timid but sweet little girl who had given him the paper star that sat next to his pillow. But he was lucid enough, despite the limitations of his bed-ridden body, to recognize that her presence next to him had to have been just another part of his dreams. The little girl who had appeared out of the blue that one day had long since disappeared back into the great big world outside his hospital room.

 _I can only see her in my dreams now,_ he thought, and closed his eyes to the pale room.

As much as he was grateful to the powers that be for letting him wake from his coma, Minato recognized the fact that he would now have to contend with the uncertainty of his future. In his dream world, where time neither moved forward nor backward, he could observe events from afar, with no influence on their outcome. But now, it was time to let go of dreams, and start facing the future of his reality. *

* * *

For the rest of the day, Subaru had a hard time focusing on the tasks at hand. There were lots of things to do, and people to talk to, but Subaru found herself staring into space, a hollow feeling gnawing at her heart.

When the blood drive concluded, the girls waved farewell to Kyou, who had elected to stay late. The five girls waited outside the hospital by the pickup area for their parents to arrive, and talked happily about their day and their plans for tomorrow's Tanabata Festival.

"Last year's fireworks were wonderful! We should get to the river early so we can find a good spot," Itsuki said.

"But if it rains they would have to cancel the fireworks display," Nanako cautioned. "We should see what the weather is like first."

As the others chatted, Aoi glanced to her right and saw Subaru with her head bowed, looking absently down at the ground. Gently nudging the pink-haired girl with her elbow, Aoi asked, "What's wrong, Subaru? You don't look so good. Do you feel sick?"

Hearing this, Hikaru piped in, and said in a scary voice, "Oh! Did Subaru catch one of the scary germs that they have in the hospital? You know there are flesh-eating bacteria that can eat you alive in places like this!"

Aoi shuddered and shouted back, "Hikaru, don't say creepy things like that!"

Itsuki touched a finger to her lips and looked thoughtfully at Subaru. "Aoi-chan has a point though. Subaru-chan, you haven't looked very cheerful since you came back with Kyou-chan after the lunch break."

"Did Kyou say something that upset you?" Nanako asked evenly, but from her expression it was clear she was concerned whether something had happened between Subaru and Kyou.

Subaru shook her head and smiled appreciatively at her friends' show of concern. "It's nothing like that. It's just that…I saw an old friend, that's all."

"'An old friend'?" The girls said in unison and stared hard at Subaru.

"What kind of 'friend'?" Hikaru asked bluntly while Itsuki blushed. "Is it a he or a she?"

"It's a boy, but I had met him many years ago when I was little, and he…he didn't recognize me," Subaru answered, unable to mask the sadness in her voice.

"So you spoke to him, then?" Itsuki wondered.

"No, I didn't…um…" Subaru wasn't sure how to explain the situation to the others, so she said resignedly, "there was no way for me to reach him."

This puzzled the girls who looked at one another then back at Subaru. "But did you _try_ to talk to him?" Hikaru wondered, and Subaru shook her head.

"No, I couldn't, because—" Subaru began to say.

But Hikaru wasn't done. She interrupted Subaru and continued to say, "In that case, if you didn't even get to talk to him, then of course he couldn't recognize you!"

"Hikaru-chan's right," Itsuki echoed. "Next time you see him, you should talk to him. He may very well remember you. It's just that it's been so long that he might not recognize you immediately; but if you remind him about the time you spent together, then I think he will remember you."

Subaru frowned and looked down at her shoes. She absently touched the star-shaped clip in her hair and said in a bare whisper, "But I don't know if it's possible for me to see him again…"

* * *

That night, as Subaru wrapped up her writing assignment for the day, she turned her attention to the window. The gray sky during the day had given way to a pitch-black night. The light from the stars was completely obscured by the thick clouds, which signaled rain in the day to come.

 _I wonder if this is what the universe will look like one day; once it has expanded to the point where the distances between stars and galaxies is so great, their light will never reach one another…_

Subaru closed her eyes and put down her pencil. When she opened her eyes again, her book on stars and mythology came into view, and her thoughts went back to the story of the celestial maiden and cow herder as she put away her notebook and started to get ready for bed.

 _If it rains on Tanabata then Orihime and Hikoboshi have to wait until the following year to see one another again…_

 _But humans don't enjoy the same kind of time that stars do; our lives are short and brief in comparison. We pass each other by, have chance meetings, and sometimes never see one another again. That's simply how life is. We hold onto the precious memories of our meetings with those we love and cherish, but in the end, no matter how much we want to hold on, we have to say goodbye at the bridge across the Milky Way…_

With these lingering thoughts on her mind, Subaru nestled herself under her blankets and allowed the veil of sleep to cover her eyes.

The familiar furnishings in her bedroom shifted and transformed. When Subaru opened her eyes she saw a white hospital room with gray, cheerless clouds outside the window. The only splash of color in the room was in the form of a young boy with shoulder length red hair and a young girl with cotton candy pink hair.

 _Minato-kun? Is this from back when we were kids?_ Subaru thought distantly as the younger version of herself reached into her little purse and presented Minato with two cartons of strawberry milk.

"Here you go! I brought some more this time since you said you like them!"

"Thanks," Minato smiled as the young Subaru placed the cartons on the nightstand, next to the colorful paper star she had given him a few days before. Studying the girl, he noticed the touch of sadness in her eyes and wondered, "What's wrong? You look kind of down today."

Young Subaru's shoulders drooped. Crawling onto the wide hospital bed, she sat down next to the boy and curled her legs to her chin. "I was watching the news this morning with Dad, and there was a meeting where scientists were discussing whether Pluto should be a planet again or not. I was really hoping they would change their minds, but in the end they decided not to make Pluto a planet again, and that made me really sad."

"Oh," Minato absorbed the news thoughtfully. "But I don't think it matters how people choose to label Pluto. People like to place things into neat categories like planets, dwarf planets, asteroid, and comets. I think no matter how people choose to label it, in the end, Pluto will always be itself."

The pink haired little girl looked at her companion tentatively as she thought about his words. Finally, she smiled and the sadness that was in her eyes lifted. "I guess you're right. Just like how you're you, and I'm me. We'll always be ourselves."

Minato smiled back and gave her a firm nod. "That's right!"

"I wonder what Pluto looks like," young Subaru mused. "There are photos for all of the other planets, but no one knows what Pluto looks like." To her friend, she beamed and said, "Maybe we should go there next time?"

"That's true, but unlike the other places we've visited before which are light years away, there's a space probe called New Horizons that's on its way to Pluto right now," the red haired boy pointed out. "Within a few more years we should be able to see pictures of Pluto from the probe; then everyone will know what Pluto looks like."

"That's true…" young Subaru contemplated, then she stood up on her knees as a thought struck her. "In that case, then to be fair to everyone else, we should wait until the probe gets there before we see Pluto! That way everyone will know at the same time what Pluto looks like!"

"Okay! Promise?" the boy held out his pinky finger.

Giggling, the girl and the boy hooked their pinky fingers together.

"Promise!"

Gradually the sound of innocent laughter in Subaru's ears gave way to the sound of waves crashing onto a rocky shore. An overwhelming sense of drowsiness overcame Subaru's senses, and she struggled to keep her eyes open. Try as she might, all she could make out from between her heavy eyelids was a large moon hovering above a setting sun.

A warm presence next to her shifted and took her hand. The sensation was at once comforting yet distant; tenuous like a thin wisp of smoke that would vanish with the slightest breeze.

"You tell me to live. There's no end to how cruel you are," a familiar but unidentifiable voice spoke softly to her ears.

The fingers around her hand tightened their grasp just a little, and despite the fragility of this moment, Subaru wanted nothing more than to hold onto this feeling of warmth and contentment in her heart for the rest of eternity.

She tried to keep her eyes open, but the urge to sleep was too strong. As the sound of waves grew louder and louder, slowly drowning out the presence next to her, the comforting voice whispered, "But because I met you…I am now able to see the hope that I thought was out of sight."

Subaru's eyes blinked open at those words, but the gentle voice in her ear was gone, replaced by the sound of rain against glass. Rubbing her eyes groggily, Subaru sat up in her bed and looked through her window at the overcast landscape beyond the panes of glass.

As memories became dreams and dreams transformed into memories, Subaru repeated the word that stood out most clearly to her from her night's sojourn.

"Hope…" she whispered as the rain continued to fall outside.

* * *

A/N:

* Based on what I read in the medical literature and feedback I got from an MD, someone in Minato's situation would probably have some problems with memory and motor skills after so many years in a coma. However, to keep things a little more upbeat and hopeful, I decided to forego some of the hard, cold facts, and made it so that while Minato's body is in a weakened state, his mind is still sharp and he remembers everything that happened in the canon, albeit in the form of a long dream.

As for why Minato recalls the events of the anime as a dream, my interpretation of his two split personifications is that they're two parts of his soul. One chose to try and change his fate, while the other stayed behind (as for why the other half stayed behind and created the green house, I have no good explanation for that at the moment :p). In the end, once they've fused back together and returned to Minato's body, the whole thing seemed like a dream to him.

You can find the illustration for this chapter here (remove the spaces and replace the period with a dot): fav (period) me/d92fzb0

Thanks to Tomoyo Ichijouji for beta-ing!


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

By early afternoon, rain had given way to a light drizzle. The air had cooled, and the ground and pavement were wet with puddles of gray rainwater.

Despite the gloomy weather, the city's residents showed no signs of reigning back their enthusiasm for the Tanabata festivities. Under the canopy of the shopping arcade, throngs of young people in brightly colored robes and families with excited children went from shop to shop, enjoying the games and decorations that had been set up.

Subaru, wearing the new pink yukata her mother had bought for her, walked with Aoi as they got off at the bus stop across from the shopping arcade. Aoi, wearing a cute purple and baby blue yukata with floral prints, spotted Hikaru and Nanako and waved at them.*

"Hey!" Hikaru waved back as they made their way towards each other, their wooden geta slippers making a series of loud "clack" sounds as they went.

"I'm surprised you guys got here first," Hikaru said as they sat down at a bench and waited for their one remaining friend. "Itsuki's late, even though she's almost always on time."

"Maybe she ran into traffic?" Nanako suggested. "I think her parents usually drive her when she needs to go out."

"Yup! Looking at her you would think Itsuki's the cool, pampered princess type of person, but in fact she's actually quite bold, and a great actress to boot," Hikaru said with a grin. "Last year when we put on a school play, she chose to play the role of the prince, even though the class had nominated her for the role of the princess."

As Aoi tried to imagine Itsuki dressed as a prince, a black sedan pulled up to the bus station. Itsuki emerged, clad in an elegant blue and white yutaka, a sprig of flower pinned to the side of her silky black hair, looking every bit like a classic Japanese beauty.

"You say that, Hikaru-chan, but Itsuki-chan really does look like a princess," Subaru said and the others nodded in silent agreement as Itsuki walked towards them.

"Sorry I'm late. We were originally going to take the Kasasagi Bridge, but it's still closed, so my mother had to take a detour."

"It's not your fault, Itsuki. There's no need to apologize," Nanako said with an understanding smile.

Itsuki looked around, as though searching for someone. She turned to Aoi, "Is Kyou-chan not joining us, Aoi-chan?"

Aoi shook her head. Tilting her head towards the hospital building, the top of which was just visible at the other end of the shopping arcade, Aoi said, "I asked her if she wanted to come, but she said her brother's being moved to the rehab facility tomorrow so she's staying with him today."

"Oh, that's too bad," Itsuki said. "Next year then, I suppose."

Behind Itsuki, Subaru's eyes shifted from the top of the hospital building to the pavement at her feet. Her fingers tightened around the little drawstring purse that matched her yukata.

This small gesture did not go unnoticed by Aoi. But before the bespectacled girl could say anything, Hikaru grabbed Aoi's and Subaru's hands and pulled them forward. "Since everyone's here, let's get going! The festival is waiting for us!"

As they plunged into the noise and bright colors of the festival, Aoi briefly forgot about the shadow behind her friend's eyes. The girls played carnival games, ogled merchandise and souvenirs for sale, and gazed with wonder at the giant paper streamers and decorations around them.

At the entrance of a department store, the girls paused at the sight of a large bamboo plant, its branches decorated with many pieces of tanzaku paper: colorful strips of paper on which people wrote down their wishes for the future.

"Ah, a wish tree! Shall we go make our wishes too?" Itsuki suggested, and the girls each proceeded to scribble their wishes on a piece of tanzaku paper supplied on a table in front of the bamboo plant.

"What did you wish for, Aoi?" Hikaru peered over at Aoi, who jumped and hid her tanzaku behind her back.

"Hikaru! You're not supposed to peep!"

"But they're all going to be tied to the bamboo stalk anyway. Then everyone will be able to see," Hikaru retorted.

"That's true," Itsuki said, her eyes on the colorful wish tree next to them. "But my parents told me you're not supposed to read another person's wish before they tie it to the tree, because then the wish won't come true."

"Really? I've never heard of that before," Hikaru admitted. "Well, alright then. Let's get some food first, and we can come back and read the wishes on the tree later. I saw people eating candied strawberries earlier, and they look really good!"

The girls nodded in assent and went about hanging their tanzaku. As Aoi went to tie her wish to a branch of the bamboo, she looked over at Subaru and saw her friend with her tanzaku still in hand, a look of uncertainty on her face.

"You okay, Subaru?" Aoi asked, concerned.

Hearing Aoi's voice, Subaru blinked. "Ah! I-I'm fine," she answered, cupping her hands over the tanzaku and hiding the writing on it from view.

Behind them, Hikaru called out to Aoi and Subaru, "Are you guys done? Let's go!"

"Coming!" Subaru shouted, and hurriedly tied her tanzaku to a low branch on the bamboo stalk.

After rejoining the group, Subaru and Aoi walked side by side in silence. Aoi glanced tentatively at Subaru and saw the same sadness she'd seen from the day before in Subaru's normally bright eyes.

 _Is she still upset about the friend she saw yesterday?_ Aoi wondered.

Having known Subaru for most of their lives, Aoi felt a little disappointed by the fact that Subaru had never told her about this friend of hers before. But everyone had secrets and omissions in life that—whether intentional or not—their friends and family never knew about. Aoi herself was guilty of this as well, as she, for many months, could not work up the nerves to tell Subaru the reason for why she choose to go to a different junior high school.

 _Even though we're right next to each other,_ Aoi thought as she shifted her gaze from Subaru down to the ground, _I can't tell what's going through Subaru's mind right now._

As much as Aoi wished Subaru could open up and confide in her, she also knew speaking up about one's worries wasn't easy. Even though she could press Subaru on the matter, she didn't want to make her more upset. If only there was some way for her to know what thoughts were going through Subaru's head right now, then maybe…

A thought suddenly struck her, and Aoi stopped in her tracks and turned her feet around. "I'm going to go use the restroom," she announced.

"Eh?" the group paused, surprised. "Oh, okay then. We'll wait for you here—"

"No, you guys go ahead; I'll catch up!" Aoi said without looking back, and peeled away into the crowd.

But instead of going to the restroom, Aoi backtracked to the bamboo stalk.

Searching for the tanzaku Subaru had written on earlier, Aoi scanned the tree and before long, spotted the pink slip of paper she was searching for. Taking the paper in her hand, Aoi turned it around and saw a line of writing in Subaru's handwriting.

"I wish I could see him again."

Aoi's hand let go of the tanzaku and she turned on her heel once again and jogged in the direction of her friends.

"Subaru, you idiot…" Aoi clenched her teeth as she weaved through the crowd, "You can't give up so easily like this!"

* * *

Outside the covered shopping arcade, the four girls sans Aoi stopped and surveyed the food offerings available to them. Itsuki stepped away from the group and pointed at a cart selling crepes. "I'm going to go get a chocolate crepe. What about you?" she asked the other girls.

"I'm getting candied strawberries," answered Hikaru.

"I want to try the takoyaki," Nanako said, raising her hand.

"What about you, Subaru-chan?" Itsuki asked, when Subaru didn't speak up.

Subaru looked around her indecisively, "I think I'll look around first. Do we want to meet back here later on?"

"Sounds good to me!" Hikaru grinned as she and Nanako walked away.

"See you later, Subaru-chan," Itsuki said before she made her way to the crepe stand.

Once everyone had gone, Subaru sighed. Truthfully, she didn't have much of an appetite, and none of the foods she usually enjoyed looked appealing to her as she strolled past the various vendors.

S _till, I should eat something…_ Subaru thought.

A gap between the rows of vendors drew her eyes, and she found a vending machine selling strawberry milk squeezed between two food stalls. Picking out the right coins from her purse, Subaru approached the machine, inserted the money, and pushed the button for the pink beverage. With a clunk and a few thuds, two cartons rolled out the bottom.

On a normal day Subaru would've smiled at her good fortune at landing a free package of strawberry milk, but today a profound sense of melancholy filled Subaru's heart as she reached to pick up the cartons.

Overhead, the dark clouds rumbled and a rain shower begin to fall.

Caught by surprise by the sudden downpour, Subaru squealed. "Eek!"

With the strawberry milk cradled in her arms, she and the other festival attendees scattered to look for cover. Luckily for her, Subaru managed to duck underneath the canopy of a nearby shop. She touched her hair and pushed the damp bangs out of her eyes.

"Ah…I should've brought an umbrella," she lamented, looking out at the rain.

Tucking the freebie box of strawberry milk into her purse, Subaru stuck a straw into the one she'd purchased and slowly sipped the flavored milk.

Around her, the rain continued to fall. Standing alone under the canopy and with nothing else to do, Subaru took out her smart phone from her purse and started to browse through the day's astronomy related news. It had only been a month since the fly-by of Pluto by the New Horizons space probe, and nearly all of the articles she saw focused on this historic event. *

As Subaru scrolled past the rows of thumbnail images of Pluto on her phone, her eyes began to moisten.

 _I'm sorry, Minato-kun…I couldn't keep our promise to see the first pictures of Pluto together._

Subaru sniffled and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. The sound of someone running towards her made Subaru look up, and her wet eyes widened when she saw Aoi had ducked under the canopy she was standing under.

"Aoi-chan…"

Subaru began, but Aoi, standing with her face in profile towards her, said, "The friend you mentioned yesterday…" Aoi paused, trying to catch her breath, "…is he still in town?"

Subaru was taken aback by the question. "Yes…but not for long." She looked from Aoi to the rain and sipped the last bit of strawberry milk left in the carton. "He's leaving tomorrow for another city."

"If he's still here, then you should go see him!" Aoi said firmly, but Subaru shook her head, sending strands of her hair swaying from side to side.

"It's not that simple, Aoi-chan! The friend I was talking about…he's Kyou-chan's older brother."

Aoi's brows drew together as she stared at Subaru in bewilderment. "Kyou's brother? But how?"

"I met him when my mom was hospitalized many years ago," Subaru explained. "I'd gotten lost one day when I went to visit her and found him while he was playing with a planetarium in his room. We saw each other almost every day for a month, and we'd talk about the stars. I gave him a paper star as a present, but one day he suddenly disappeared."

Subaru laced her fingers together and said ruefully, "For a while I thought our meeting was all a dream, but it wasn't. When we came to the hospital for the blood drive yesterday I accidentally walked into his room. Even though he had been in a coma for many years, he still had the paper star I gave him. That was how I realized he was the friend I had met all those years ago. But we met again too late; he's going to be moved to a rehab facility tomorrow."

Meeting Aoi's gaze, Subaru said in resignation, "Even if I did get to see him, Aoi-chan, there's no guarantee that he would be awake, or would recognize me. After all, it's been so many years since we last saw one another, and it was before his illness…" Subaru's voice drifted off.

Aoi said nothing for a long moment, but after a few minutes, she began quietly, "That might be true…but if you never try, then you'll abandon the chance, no matter how slim it might be, that he would recognize you!"

Above them the rain had stopped falling, and as the clouds retreated, Aoi seized Subaru's hands and urged, "Even if the odds are low, even if they're one in a million, or one in a billion, if you don't try, then it will never happen!"

A splash of late afternoon sunlight, bright and warm, descended upon the rain drenched city. The gray puddles on the ground now shimmered with a golden light. The words that Subaru had heard in her dream echoed, unbidden, in her mind as the sunlight reached her eyes.

… _But because I was able to meet you…I am now able to see the hope that I thought was out of sight…_

 _Hope…_

Next to them, a little girl pointed to the now cloudless sky and said to her mother, "Mama, it's stopped raining! Does this mean that Orihime and Hikoboshi will be able to see each other tonight?"

"It sure does," the mother replied gently. "As long as the rain clears before the stars appear, they'll be able to see one another."

As she watched the sunset gradually paint the azure sky in strokes of pink, orange, and gold, Subaru recalled another sunset, this one at the shores of a distant ocean from eons ago. Even though she saw it in a dream, Subaru could remember the feeling of wanting to hold onto that special moment with the person sitting next to her.

 _I was able to hold onto this precious feeling because I didn't want it to vanish_ , Subaru thought. _If I don't reach for something, then it will always remain out of reach._

"Subaru! Aoi!"

The two girls turned sharply at the sound of their names, and saw Hikaru, Nanako, and Itsuki running towards them. "There you guys are! We were getting worried because we couldn't find you!" Hikaru called out as they gathered underneath the canopy. "The clouds have cleared so they're going to go ahead with the fireworks display for tonight! We should go claim a spot by the river right now if we want a good view."

To everyone's great surprise, Subaru turned, and said with urgency, "Sorry, Hikaru-chan, but I won't be going. There's someone I have to go see right now!"

And with that, Subaru took off down the street, leaving her friends dumb-founded.

"Subaru, wait!" Aoi started to take off after her, but Hikaru grabbed Aoi by the shoulders as they all followed Subaru.

"Aoi, what is going on with Subaru?! Who is she going to see all of a sudden?"

"Uhg, it's complicated," Aoi said as they weaved through the crowd, running as fast as they could in their wooden slippers to keep up with Subaru's footsteps. "Remember how Subaru said she met an old friend yesterday? Well, that person is Kyou's brother!"

"You mean the one who was in a coma?" Hikaru exclaimed incredulously.

"That's the one!" Aoi shouted back.

"Then that means Subaru-chan is headed to the hospital right now, isn't she?" Itsuki asked as they dashed across a crosswalk just as the pedestrian signal light flashed red. "But the bridge that leads to the hospital is closed; how will she get across?"

When the girls finally caught up to Subaru, they had reached the far end of the shopping arcade, and stood across the street from one end of the bridge. As the others hunched over to catch their breath from the long sprint, Subaru's eyes were firmly fixed on the Kasasagi Bridge in front of her.

Blocking her way was a large, orange sign that read: "Bridge Closed. Please Take Detour", as well as a small crew of maintenance workers who were busy working on the bridge.

 _I wonder if I could persuade them to let me cross,_ Subaru wondered, taking a small step forward.

But that option was shot down when a couple came up to the workers, said something to them and pointed at the opposite bank. The worker they spoke to shook his head, and motioned for them to go towards the bus station.

As the couple walked away, Subaru took out her phone and did a quick search for patient visiting hours at the local hospital. To her dismay, she had a little less than half an hour left before the end of visiting hours. Even if Subaru were to call a taxi, she would still not be able to make it there in time before the end of visiting hours.

From where she stood, Subaru could clearly see the front of the hospital. It would take her no more than ten minutes to reach the hospital if she were to cross the creek.

Realizing what she had to do, Subaru crossed the street a little ways downstream from the bridge and looked over the side. The clear water of the creek was shallowest at the portion directly below the bridge piers. Beyond that, the water gave way to knee-deep shallows until it grew so dark, Subaru had no way to judge how deep the water was.

"I wouldn't cross from over there if I were you," Nanako said from behind Subaru and almost made the pink-haired girl jump out of her yukata.

"Nanako-chan!?" Subaru shrieked and spun around to see all of her friends standing behind her. "Everyone…what are all of you doing here?"

The girls smiled at her, and Aoi said, "We're your friends, Subaru. If there's something you really want to do, we'll all try and help you."

"But how?" Subaru wondered.

Nanako and Itsuki shared a look with one another. A rare, impish grin crept onto their faces, and Nanako said, "I have an idea."

* * *

A/N

*A yukata is a light, casual kimono worn during the summer in Japan. It is often worn with wooden sandals called geta.

My idea to include Pluto and the New Horizons mission in this story popped up when I saw an ad on the Science Channel for a TV special on the probe's flyby. Like, Subaru, I'm also an astronomy geek, and I think both of us would be very excited by the first sights of Pluto (which, by the way, will always be planet status in my heart…even if the scientist part of me bulks at the sentimentality). This also marks the first time in my fanfiction writing career where the success or failure of a real-world scientific venture would impact the plot of a story I was writing. When it was reported that New Horizons had suffered a software glitch and had gone into safe mode less than two weeks before the flyby, suffice to say, I freaked out a little bit. Luckily, NASA was able to discover and fix the issue and the flyby went by seamlessly.

You can find the illustration for this chapter here (remove the space and replace the period with a dot): fav (period) me/d92ua6l

Thanks to Tomoyo Ichijouji for beta-ing!


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

On the Kasasagi Bridge, a maintenance worker shoveling gravel looked up when a pair of geta-clad feet stopped in front of him. Straightening his back, he saw the lavender-haired Nanako staring at him.

"I'm sorry, miss, but the bridge is closed—"

"Como estas?"

Taken aback, the man blinked several times. "Eh? Could you say that again?"

"我會說中文"

"What? Are you Chinese?"

"Non, je suis Japonias."

By now Nanako had thoroughly flummoxed the man as well as attracted the attention of his coworkers, who all stopped what they were doing and gathered around the strange girl.

"Are you lost?" One of the other workers asked her in rudimentary English, but Nanako simply looked at them with a poker face, and replied in Italian, "Non mi sono perso."

"How can we help her if we can't understand what she's saying?" one of the men said to his coworkers.

At this moment, Itsuki appeared and came to stand next to Nanako, "Ah, there you are! Excuse me, mister," she said sweetly to the men in perfect Japanese, "my friend and I are lost. Could you tell us how to get to the train station…on foot?"

"'On foot', you say? That's a bit of a walk, though," one man said. "It would be a lot easier to get there if you took the bus."

"My friend here is an international summer exchange student," Itsuki said sweetly, "We came to see the Tanabata Festival today, and we need to get back home before it's too dark. However, my friend wants to see more of the city and enjoy the festive atmosphere while we're here, so we thought we'd take the scenic route and walk back to the train station."

Hearing this, the workers smiled approvingly, "Ah, I see! Our city has one of the best Tanabata festivals in this region. Let me tell you the best way to go so you can see the sights on the way!"

Nearby, Aoi, Hikaru, and Subaru watched from behind a tree as Itsuki and Nanako successfully engaged the workers in conversation. Once the men had their backs turned to the creek, Hikaru and Aoi nodded at Subaru, signaling to her that the coast was clear.

Subaru, her expression determined, wasted no time as she picked up the hem of her yukata with one hand, and gathered up her slippers and purse in the other hand. Gingerly, she climbed over the concrete barrier at the top of the creek bed and scooted her way down the slippery concrete slope as Aoi and Hikaru watched with bated breaths. When Subaru's bare feet stepped into the cold water she shuddered, but the pink haired girl ignored the momentary discomfort and began wading across the shallow creek bed.

Even though the water only came up to her ankles, the creek was not without its hazards. The glare from the sunlight meant that Subaru could not see a shallow pit in the creek bed in front of her until it was too late and she had stepped right into it.

Subaru gasped in surprise as her legs wobbled dangerously. The noise made one of the men on the bridge glance over the side.

Aoi covered her eyes with her hands, not wanting to look. "Oh no! They're going to see her!"

But Hikaru did not look away. Even though it seemed inevitable that Subaru was going to be discovered at that moment, Hikaru kept her eyes trained on her friend. "No, it's not over yet!" she said with conviction and watched as Subaru steadied herself by planting a hand in the water, forcing her to drop the hem of her yukata in the water. "She can still make it; the ending hasn't been decided!"

On the bridge, the worker who had looked over the side saw only the shadow cast by the deck of the bridge. If he had been but a few meters closer to the side of the bridge, he would've spotted the girl standing in the creek with a wet yukata. But fortunately for Subaru, that was not the case, and shrugging off the noise he'd heard as his imagination, the man turned around and continued the conversation he was having with Itsuki.

"Yes! A lucky break! Come on, Subaru! You can do it!" Hikaru quietly cheered.

Aoi removed her hands from her eyes and saw Subaru gingerly push herself upright and stubbornly continued her trek until she at last reached the other side. After a few more nerve-wracking minutes, she climbed to the top of the opposite bank and waved at her friends.

Hikaru and Aoi each flashed a thumbs-up back at Subaru as they grinned from ear to ear.

Subaru smiled at her friends' encouragement. Once she had wrung the water from the bottom of her yukata and slipped on her geta slippers, she turned and continued on her way towards the hospital.

Watching her disappear from view, Aoi sighed and looked up at the darkening sky as the first twinkle of stars begin to appear.

"Good luck, Subaru…"

* * *

Kyou gingerly placed Minato's planetarium inside a cardboard box she had brought along earlier that day. The planetarium took up most of the space inside the container, which held the scant belongings Minato kept in his hospital room.

At her brother's request, the lights had been turned off and the last rays of sunlight cast deep shadows through the barren room. Minato, his eyes half-lidded, sat propped up in his bed, watching the sunset on the distant horizon.

"Nii-san…"

At the sound of his sister's voice, Minato tilted his head towards her, and Kyou could see his eyes were clear and aware.

She smiled, and sat down next to him on the bed. Taking his hand, Kyou said, "Mom and Dad are getting the final paperwork ready for tomorrow. They've specifically asked the rehab center for a room with a clear view of the sky, so you'll be able to see the stars at night. They'll be coming by as soon as they're done."

Minato smiled back, and with some effort, he mouthed a quiet, "Thank you," to his little sister.

Kyou's fingers tightened around her brother's frail hand and she felt a lump in her throat. Starting tomorrow her brother would begin a new chapter in his life. Looking back at all these years of anguish and worry, Kyou felt a huge rush of relief in the knowledge that her brother was still himself, that the illness that imprisoned him for seven years did not rob him of his spirit or his mind.

"The road ahead will be long, and it won't be easy. But I'll always be there for you, Nii-san," Kyou continued, her voice quivering a little as she spoke, "You will definitely get better in the future. I know you will!"

Minato returned her smile, and gently patted her hand to comfort her and acknowledge her support.

Taking a deep breath, Kyou brushed away the tears at the edge of her eyes, and the little paper star next to Minato's pillow caught her attention. Picking it up in its frame, she held it up for Minato to see and asked, "Nii-san, do you want me to put this in the box as well?"

The smile on Minato's face faltered, and he stared for a long minute at the star. Kyou saw a touch of sadness enter his expression, and she could well understand her brother's hesitation. At last, he shook his head, and Kyou nodded sympathetically.

"I'll leave it here with you, then," she said softly and placed the frame next to her brother's hand, who then carefully placed his hand over the glass.

An unexpected knock came from the door made Kyou look up. "That's odd, the nurse usually don't come by at this hour," she said to herself. Touching her brother's arm, Kyou said, "I'll go have a look," and walked to the door.

Thinking the medical staff needed to do some last minute health checks before Minato was ready to be discharged, Kyou's brows shot up in surprise when the person who greeted her at the door turned out instead to be Subaru. The bottom of her yukata was damp, and she was breathing deeply, as though she had run all the way here.

"Subaru-chan? You're all wet! What are you—?" but before she could finish her sentence, Subaru held up something to her.

It was a carton of strawberry milk.

"This is for you," Subaru said, offering the pink carton to Kyou, who could not understand what Subaru was doing here, or why she was offering her strawberry milk.

"Why this all of a sudden?"

"Because, Kyou-chan," Subaru smiled wistfully, "I was the one who gave your brother the strawberry milk all those years ago."

"What…" Kyou took a step back, stunned. "I can't believe it," she whispered, her eyes flitting from Subaru to the strawberry milk and back again. "But why now? Why didn't you say anything earlier?"

"When I first met you, I didn't know either," Subaru replied honestly, "But when I saw the paper star next to Minato-kun…that's when I knew, because that's the same paper star I'd given to a boy I met in the hospital eight years ago, a boy who had a love for astronomy, just like I do."

Subaru placed the strawberry milk in Kyou's hands. Glancing at the partially opened door of the hospital room, Subaru asked apprehensively, "I know all of this is very abrupt, but I would like to see Minato-kun one last time before he leaves."

When Kyou didn't speak, Subaru implored, "Please, Kyou-chan. I know it's almost past visiting hours, but please..."

By now tears have rolled down Kyou's cheeks, and after taking another moment to collect herself, she wiped them away with the sleeve of her jacket.

"To think, after all these years…" Kyou began, but shook her head. It didn't matter that it took this long. All that mattered right now was the knowledge that her brother's friend had returned for him, and for that, Kyou was grateful to Subaru.

"Don't worry about the visiting hours; if a nurse comes by I'll talk to her about it. It'll be fine," she said to Subaru, her voice calm but still thick with emotion. "Nii-san is awake right now, so you can go in and talk to him, but…" Kyou paused, "I don't know if he would recognize you. After all, it was such a long time ago since he last saw you…"*

"That's okay," Subaru said softly even as her heart was filled with a tremendous mix of trepidation and anticipation.

Her hand reached for the door handle, and she cast one last grateful smile at Kyou, "I just want an opportunity for us to see the first pictures of Pluto together, like we'd promised each other."

Pushing the door ajar, Subaru stepped into the hospital room, her wooden geta making a soft "clack" sound as she walked across the linoleum floor.

Seeing Minato with his eyes closed, Subaru hesitated. A whole slew of what-ifs ran through her mind at the moment, but when Subaru saw his hand over the paper star, the hope that had briefly waned in her heart rose up again.

 _I won't turn back now_ , she thought, _not after we finally found each other again._

With her resolve steeled, Subaru opened her mouth and spoke into the quiet room, "Minako-kun?"

Minato's eyes fluttered open at the new voice calling out to him. By now the sun had fully set, and the room was dark except for the stretch of moonlight coming from the window. Minato's eyes narrowed, trying to make out who it was that had entered his room.

Slowly, Subaru walked to his bed and into the light from the window. Her pink yukata took on a pale glow under the light of the moon, lending her an ethereal quality as she came to a stop next to Minato.

"Hello again, Minato-kun."

Minato's blue eyes stared questioningly at her. Seeing his expression, Subaru smiled, and when she spoke her voice felt tight, but she refused to give into the tears that hovered at the edge of her eyes.

"Do you…remember me? We…we used to go see the stars together, you and I. We saw Betelgeuse, and the Pleiades star cluster! I…" Subaru sat down on the bed and touched a corner of the wooden frame housing the paper star. "I was the one who gave this star to you. Do you remember?"

At those words Minato's eyes grew wide. He took a shuddering breath as he began to realize who was sitting next to him.

 _Is this a dream?_ He wondered mutely, unwilling to believe what was happening. _Has everything gone back to the way it was when my time was frozen?_

Slowly, with trembling hands, he reached out and softly touched her arm. The feeling of her warm skin against his fingertips made Minato's eyebrows curl in bewilderment. "Am I…dreaming…?" he asked faintly.

Seeing the doubt on his face, Subaru shook her head vehemently and squeezed his hand in reassurance. "This isn't a dream, Minato-kun! This is real!" More softly, she said, "Do you remember our promise to see the first pictures of Pluto? I'm here to fulfill our promise."

Hot tears spilled over Minato's hollow cheeks, and to Subaru's great relief, he nodded. Subaru smiled in delight, large drops of tears now also freely falling down her cheeks.

"I'm…so glad," she said haltingly, no longer able to keep her voice steady from the strong emotions she felt flooding her heart. "I'm so glad that you remembered me!"

The two of them sat in silence for a long moment, hands intertwined as the reality of their reunion settled in their minds. Minato was the first to break the silence as he tried to speak.

"Y-your…" Minato gasped softly, but Subaru couldn't hear. Leaning in until her face was next to his, she waited patiently as he struggled to articulate his words.

"…Name…what is…your name?"

Realizing what he was asking, Subaru blushed. She never did tell Minato what her name was, and here she was, forgetting to introduce herself again!

"I-I'm sorry! I almost forgot again, didn't I?" Subaru stammered in a flustered voice, looking downward in embarrassment. "M-my name is Subaru! A good friend of mine is friends with Kyou-chan, and she introduced us, so now I'm also friends with Kyou-chan…or at least I think we're also friends now; I never asked Kyou-chan, but I hope she feels the same way too…"

Subaru fell silent when she felt the bed shake gently and looked up to see Minato laughing quietly. This only made the blush on Subaru's face grow brighter, but Subaru didn't mind; what was important to her was that they were together again, and that was something truly worth smiling about.

The worn little paper star seemed to echo Subaru's feelings, as its colors seemed to glow brightly in the moonlight. However, the sight of the star reminded Subaru of the beautiful little star she remembered receiving from Minato, and the thought of the missing gift dampened the elation she felt in her heart.

"I'm glad you held onto the star I gave you, Minato-kun, but…" Subaru chewed her lips, not sure how to tell her friend about his gift. "…I-I lost the star that you gave me. I'm so sorry…"

To her surprise, rather than being upset, Minato only lightly shook his head. He raised his hand and pointed to her chest.

"Here…" he said with a smile.

"It's in here? In my heart, you mean?" Subaru placed her hand over her heart.

Minato nodded, and said slowly, "You…didn't forget…our time…together."

Hearing this Subaru sighed in relief. "No…no, I didn't forget."

She wiped at the tears that have once again collected in her eyes. "And I haven't forgotten our promise to see Pluto together either!" she said eagerly. "Here, let me show it to you now!"

From the hallway, Kyou quietly watched the scene unfold before her, the carton of strawberry milk cradled tightly to her chest. A smile lingered on her lips as Subaru settled herself next to Minato and showed him pictures of Pluto on her cell phone.

"Kyou?"

Kyou looked away from the scene in her brother's room and saw her parents making their way towards her.

"Is something wrong? Why are you standing in the hallway?" her father said with alarm.

The red haired girl quickly shook her head to dispel their concern. "Everything's fine. In fact," she looked back into the room, "a minor miracle has just occurred."

* * *

Back across the bridge, Aoi and the others stood waiting. Even though it was already evening and the stars had appeared, they were reluctant to leave, wishing and praying for their friend's success.

"Do you think Subaru got to see him in the end?" Hikaru asked as they watched the lights from the festival and the stars above illuminate the night.

Itsuki looked up at the ink black sky and saw the Summer Triangle twinkling back at her. She smiled. "I'm sure they have. Because tonight is a night for reunions."

Behind them a loud whistling sound sailed through the air, followed by a bright splash of light and a loud boom. The fireworks display had started at the other end of town. Even though they weren't in the best spot to view the fireworks, none of the girls particularly minded being where they were, and they greeted the fireworks with broad smiles.

As the fireworks threw colorful splashes of light into the night sky, Aoi turned her gaze silently to the top of the hospital building from across the bridge. Somewhere in that building was Subaru, and although it took a little push, Aoi was proud of her friend for taking fate into her own hands, and chasing after her wish.

 _You did it, Subaru_ , Aoi beamed with pride. _You've made your wish come true._

* * *

"And this smooth, western portion of Tombaugh Regio," Subaru pointed to the picture of Pluto displayed on her cell phone while Minato listened with rapt attention, "scientists have named it Sputnik Planum. They think it's less than 100 million years old because of the lack of impact craters, and it could be a sign that there's active geological activity on Pluto!"

The two of them sat next to one another, with Subaru curled up next to Minato on the hospital bed, their shoulders touching as she held the phone up for Minato to see.

"Now that it's passed by Pluto, New Horizons is on its way through the Kuiper Belt," Subaru said as she pulled up a diagram showing the trajectory of the space probe. "It'll see things no one has ever seen before."

Here, Subaru lowered her cell phone and looked down at the white bed sheets, "I…I want to be able to share those pictures with you, Minato-kun, and for us to see a meteor shower together someday. But you'll be leaving tomorrow…"

Subaru raised her gaze and her brown eyes met Minato's blue eyes. "I don't know if those things will be possible in the future…" she whispered.

"They will be."

Subaru and Minato's eyes flew to the door where Kyou and her parents had just stepped in. "You're more than welcome to come visit Minato any time you'd like," Minato and Kyou's mother said, a grateful smile on her lips. "Your friendship meant so much to our son during his illness, and it would mean a great deal to us, and to Minato, if you could come and visit often."

Kyou nodded, and added, "Now that you've finally found one another, you will never have to lose touch with one another ever again. I'll make sure of that!"

Holding Minato's hand, Subaru smiled tearfully at his family. "Thank you, everyone!"

A bright flash of light in the night sky had everyone turning his or her gaze to the night sky. Overhead, streaks of man-made shooting stars in the form of fireworks whizzed into the sky, exploding in a kaleidoscope of colors beneath the twinkling Summer Triangle.

Subaru felt a reassuring pressure on her hand and found Minato smiling back at her with his bright blue eyes. She returned the smile and they turned back to enjoy the fireworks.

A warm, content feeling filled Subaru's heart as she sat on that hospital bed next to her childhood friend, and it reminded her of what she had felt in her dream the night before.

 _But this is no dream,_ Subaru mused and lightly touched her chest, right above her heart. W _hen I'm next to Minato-kun, this is how I feel. This is the precious star he had given to me all those years ago._

Subaru's thoughts turned back to the night sky and the many points of light scattered across the vast expanse of space beyond the hospital window.

 _Stars that look close together in the sky are in fact very far apart. They pass each other by, their encounters brief and fleeting._

 _But sometimes, when the paths of two stars cross, they are pulled towards one another and become tightly bonded to each other._

 _Perhaps people are also like that. When we meet those important to us, by reaching out with our own hands and opening our hearts, we too can form bonds that can never be severed._

FIN.

* * *

A/N:

*Kyou's name is symbolic in this fic. In Japanese, kanji words (Chinese characters used in Japanese writing) can have two readings: the "on" reading, and the "kun" reading. The former is based on the historical Chinese pronunciation, while the latter is the native Japanese pronunciation. Kyou's name is the "on" reading for "橋", the kanji for "bridge". Thus, her role in this story is to act as a bridge that reconnects Subaru with Minato.

And with that, the story has come to a close. Even though the fanfic has ended, I think there is still plenty of room for people to imagine what sort of future Subaru and Minato will have together as they grow to know one another again (I have a few more ideas, but those are firmly in drabbles territory). I would like to say thank you for reading this story; I hope you've enjoyed it! :D

You can see the illustration for this chapter here (remove the spaces and replace the period with a dot): fav (period) me/d93eibc

Thank you to Tomoyo Ichijouji for beta-ing!


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